Class of 2022
Environmental justice demands accountability and reparations through Black and Indigenous practices by which spaces and peoples have freedom, self-determination, and autonomy.
Asia Brantley, Leandrea Clay, Bonnie Dana, Darian Dickerson, Allison Greathouse, Keiko Farah, Lucia Joseph, Mike Lu, Belise Nishimwe, Nash Overfield, Kai Radford, Hailey Russell, Will Slatin, Will Smith Jr., Tatyana Toliver-Hughes, RL Wheeler
Class of 2021
For as long as there have been people in power using their destruction of the environment to subjugate minorities, we have been fighting back and taking the land for ourselves through community efforts.
- Environmental justice centers the interests of those most affected for the purpose of liberating these communities from environmental violence. This consists of coalition building in a combined effort to actively resist oppression.
- Environmental justice is that everyone has the right to a safe living space that is equipped with the tools for them to live healthy and fulfilling lives no matter their race, gender, age, or income.
It is time to take a stand! Just think how many more people are falling victim to environmental racism that the media hides just so they can’t receive help and continue to suffer in silence. We must remove the “muzzles” and let our voices be heard. It ends here and we cannot tolerate it any longer. We must have environmental justice!
- Environmental justice is the act of repairing or restoring the relationship between an individual, group of people, or community and their environment.
- Environmental justice is when the government and/or the community steps up and does something helpful for the communities that are disproportionately affected by the harms of environmental racism.
Environmental justice is revolution. Whether that be in daily incremental steps forward or violent insurrection. There must be a will to create systems where people are valued beyond their ability to provide labor.
- Environmental justice is ensuring that all children can consume the water from their school’s water fountains without running the risk of lead poisoning, not just white children in suburbs. (from Randall and Germain, “Environmental Racism”).
- Black communities will be afforded the ability to be heard as full members of the community during the deliberation of decisions that affect them most.
- Environmental justice should not solely consist of financial payouts. The solution to systemic racism is not going to be through the same capitalist ideology that was the motivation for slavery in the first place. Reparations must consist of a means for ownership, not just capital.
- Environmental justice recognizes those consequences of historic actions (or, sometimes, inactions), acknowledges the harm environmental racism continues to create, and develops solutions that benefit those wronged by powerful people’s misuse of the natural and physical world.
In order to achieve environmental justice, marginalized communities must be able to have self-determination over their own land and control the industry located on such land.
- Environmental justice is the need for the interests of people to outweigh the interests of profit. Only when paired with changes that center a future focused on access to food, health care, green space and the other core elements of a healthy, happy life will we be actively working toward environmental justice.
- Solidarity in the face of adversity is the pillar of environmental justice. While environmental justice supports the preservation of mother Earth and her beautiful processes, the emancipation of the land is only possible with its return to the communities who have been restricted access throughout history.
- Environmental justice requires looking at history with a conscious and critical lens so we can identify and work to change our past wrong-doings. Justice requires elevating histories of resistance, instead of labeling Black communities as victims.
For every case of environmental racism, there is a group of environmental warriors at the forefront of the environmental justice movement. Environmental justice involves people of color in both acts of resistance and institutional control. Environmental justice rewrites the destinies of people of color.
- Environmental justice acknowledges the inherent inequality within our nation’s founding/institutions. Specifically, it aims to facilitate equal and fair involvement and participation for all groups regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other factor.